Understanding Email Open & Click Tracking

When you send a tracked email from your email inbox using the HubSpot Sales Office 365 add-in, or if you send a one-to-one email from a record, HubSpot will track email opens. 

Email Opens

When you send a tracked email, HubSpot embeds an invisible one-pixel image into the email message once it is sent. When your recipient views the email and the images load, you will receive a notification that the email has been opened. 

If the recipient's email client doesn't allow the track pixel to load, HubSpot will not be able to track the email open. HubSpot tracking can be deactivated in the following situations:

• The recipient formats their email in plain text. 
• The recipient's email client doesn't automatically download images. 
• The recipient's corporate filter strips away all images for incoming emails. 

If the recipient has a very strict spam filter where they block any images or link tracking from loading in emails, your tracked email could be filtered as spam. However, email tracking tools are common, and the majority of email clients will not view your email any differently than before.  

Please note: it's not possible to see whether a tracked email was forwarded to another recipient.

Why am I getting multiple email opens for a specific tracked email?

If you receive more email open notifications than expected for a specific tracked email, it may indicate that the email was forwarded or that you copied and pasted a previously sent email. Because of privacy and security concerns, when an email is forwarded, HubSpot defaults to telling you that the original sender opened the email again. 

If you copied and pasted an email that you previously had sent, you also copy the original tracking pixel. The same tracking pixel would load for each recipient. It is recommended to send personalized emails, which you can create from scratch in the CRM or your mail client, or to use sales email templates. 

Sometimes, a single tracking image will load multiple times because of how the recipient views their emails. For example, a user could be on a server that dynamically changes that user's IP address. If the image is loaded from multiple IP addresses, then the notifications may indicate that your emails were opened by multiple people.

Also, email clients like Outlook or Apple Mail have a preview pane as part of the inbox view. If recipients scroll over your email in their inbox, this can trigger an email open notification.

What if I'm getting a 'Someone' notification?

You may see a 'Someone' notification if one of the following occurs: 

1. If you send a tracked email to multiple email addresses (including CC and BCC), they all receive the same HubSpot Sales tracking image. HubSpot will still notify you of the email open, but HubSpot likely will not be able to determine which recipient opened the email. 
2. If you have the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) toggle enabled in your HubSpot account and a contact does not have a lawful basis for data processing, HubSpot Sales will track emails you send to that contact, but the notifications will be anonymous.

Email clicks

When sending tracked emails from your email client or from a record, you can track clicks on links included in the body of the email. Links are tracked by appending tracking to the end of any hyperlink included in your email. You can see click and open information in your HubSpot activity feed.